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To cope with his dread, John Kitzhaber opened his leather-bound journal and began to write.
It was a little past 9 on the morning of Nov. 22, 2011. Gary Haugen had dropped his appeals. A Marion County judge had signed the murderer's death warrant, leaving Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, to decide Haugen's fate. The 49-year-old would soon die by lethal injection if the governor didn't intervene.
Kitzhaber was exhausted, having been unable to sleep the night before, but he needed to call the families of Haugen's victims.
"I know my decision will delay the closure they need and deserve," he wrote.
The son of University of Oregon English professors, Kitzhaber began writing each day in his journal in the early 1970s. The practice helped him organize his thoughts and, on that particular morning, gather his courage.
Kitzhaber first dialed the widow of David Polin, an inmate Haugen beat and stabbed to death in 2003 while already serving a life sentence fo…

Brian Keith Terrell again challenges Georgia's execution drug

A lawyer for condemned murderer Brian Keith Terrell is again raising questions about the compounded lethal injection drug that Georgia uses in executions.

Terrell is scheduled to die on Tuesday. He was originally slated for execution on March 10, 1 week after the scheduled execution of female death row inmate Kelly Gissendaner.

Both of those executions were put on hold temporarily when the compounded lethal injection drug, pentobarbital, turned cloudy. But Gissendaner was eventually executed in September after the state decided the drug's cloudiness was caused by how it was stored, not how it was made.

Now, in an appeal filed Thursday in Fulton County Superior Court, Terrell's attorney argues the Georgia Department of Corrections never truly discovered what caused the problem, so the agency continues to insist cold temperatures caused clumps to form in the pentobarbital.

Terrell's lawyer, Bo King, wrote in the appeal that information obtained under the Georgia Open Records Act indicate there were problems with 2 batches of pentobarbital, not just 1, suggesting the cloudiness might not be an isolated incident.

"It is only a matter of time before the drugs - compounded by an unknown pharmacy using unknown ingredients in unknown circumstances - become defective again," King wrote.

The attorney also wrote that the defense team's expert on compounding drugs reviewed state records but was limited by Georgia's secrecy law. The drug expert, Michael Jay, decided other circumstances could have caused the problem with the pentobarbital.

Jay, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences and bio-medical engineering at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, wrote in a document attached to Terrell's appeal that if officials had not noticed a problem with the drug and had used it as intended in March, Gissendaner - and later Terrell - would have suffered excruciating pain.

Jay wrote that he suspects the compounding pharmacist who made those batches of drugs used the wrong active ingredient - pentobarbital rather than pentobarbital sodium. Either that, or the pH solution in the compounded drug was incorrect.

If those executions had been carried out using the drugs, Jay wrote, it's possible that particulate matter in the pentobarbital would have lodged in blood vessels or the lungs. It would be akin to being injected with "very small pieces of glass," Jay wrote.

The sources of Georgia's lethal injection drug, and the state secrecy shrouding that information, is an issue that has been raised several times in appeals. Repeatedly the courts have upheld the use of pentobarbital and have ruled that Georgia can keep secret its drug sources to protect pharmacists from public pressure.

Terrell is scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. Tuesday for the 1992 murder of John Watson, his mother's friend. Terrell stole about $8,700 from the 70-year-old man by stealing blank checks. Watson told Terrell's mother he wouldn't press charges if Terrell returned most of the money. 2 days later, Terrell attacked Watson as he left his Newton County house for a dialysis appointment.

Fulton Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville will hold a hearing Monday on Terrell's latest appeal. At the same time, the state Board of Pardons and Paroles will hear his petition for clemency.

Lawyers for a Georgia death row inmate say the drug the state plans to use for his execution Tuesday risks violating his constitutional rights.

In a court filing Thursday, lawyers for Brian Keith Terrell say the state still doesn't know what caused clumps to appear in its compounded pentobarbital earlier this year. They say that means problems could arise again and cause serious harm to their client.

Terrell is scheduled to die Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson.

Terrell was on parole in June 1992 when he stole and forged checks belonging to a friend of his mother, 70-year-old John Watson. Prosecutors say Terrell was supposed to return the money but instead shot Watson multiple times and then severely beat him.

Source: Associated Press, December 7, 2015

State Lawyers Reject Arguments Raised by Death Row Inmate

Lawyers for Georgia filed court papers Monday rejecting arguments by an inmate set to be executed this week that prosecutors had used false and misleading testimony to convict him.

Brian Keith Terrell, 47, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the state prison in Jackson. He was convicted of the June 1992 killing of John Watson, a friend of his mother.

Terrell's lawyers argued in a court filing Friday that no physical evidence links Terrell to the slaying of the man from Covington, east of Atlanta. They also said Terrell's cousin, whose testimony prosecutors relied on, has since said he lied to save himself.

Lawyers for the state countered Monday that the courts have already heard and rejected the issues raised by Terrell's lawyers.

Terrell was on parole when he stole and forged checks belonging to Watson, who reported the theft but asked police not to pursue charges if Terrell returned most of the money. On the day Terrell was to return the money, he had his cousin drive him to Watson's house, where he shot the 70-year-old man several times and severely beat him, lawyers for the state have said.

Terrell's cousin, Jermaine Johnson, was his co-defendant and had been in jail for more than a year with the threat of the death penalty hanging over him when he agreed to a deal with prosecutors to testify against Terrell. Johnson was allowed to plead guilty to a robbery charge, receiving a 5-year prison sentence. In a sworn statement submitted Friday by Terrell's lawyers, defense investigator Melanie Goodwill wrote that Johnson has told her and defense attorney Gerald King that he was 18 and facing the death penalty and was pressured by police and the prosecutor to testify against his cousin. He told Goodwill and King he would like to give a sworn statement telling the truth but is afraid he might be arrested and put in prison for perjury if he does, Goodwill wrote.

Johnson has consistently testified under oath that Terrell admitted to killing Watson, state lawyers wrote. The hearsay statement given by the defense investigator does not meet the legal bar for new consideration, they wrote.

Prosecutors also misleadingly presented the testimony of a neighbor of Watson's as having said she saw Terrell at the scene, but the woman said Terrell is not the one she saw and prosecutors never asked her to identify him in court, Terrell's lawyers wrote.

State lawyers argued in their filing Monday that Terrell's attorneys already argued in previous court proceedings that prosecutors knowingly presented false testimony by Johnson and misleadingly presented the neighbor's testimony. Those arguments have already been reviewed and rejected by courts, state lawyers argued.

In a separate state court filing, Terrell's lawyers have challenged the safety and effectiveness of the drug the state plans to use to execute Terrell. They withdrew that challenge Monday but filed a similar complaint in federal court and asked a judge to halt his execution.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, the only state entity authorized to commute a death sentence, scheduled a clemency hearing for Terrell on Monday. It didn't immediately release a decision.

While the court appeal is pending, Terrell's mother and family and friends turned to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to ask for clemency.

Terrell is scheduled to die on Tuesday at 7 p.m. He was originally slated for execution on March 10, one week after the scheduled execution of female death row inmate Kelly Gissendaner, but both lethal injections were called off because of a problem with the lethal injection drugs.

In his appeals, Terrell's lawyer is again raising questions about the compounded lethal injection drug that Georgia uses in executions.

And the petition to the Parole Board says witnesses who testified against him were wrong about what happened on June 22, 1992, when 70-year-old John Watson was shot and beaten to death moments after leaving his Newton County house for a dialysis appointment.

In the clemency petition, Terrell's lawyer writes that Jermaine Johnson, Terrell's cousin and the prosecution's key witness, lied when he testified and the neighbor who said she saw Terrell at Watson's house actually saw someone else.

According to testimony, Terrell, just out of prison, stole 10 blank checks from Watson, his mother's friend. He wrote checks, some to himself, for a total of $8,700. When Watson discovered the theft, he told Terrell's mother he wouldn't press charges if her son returned most of the money. 2 days later, Terrell killed Watson.

In the court appeal filed last week, attorney Bo King focused on the compounded lethal injection drug, pentobarbital made by an unknown pharmacist. He said the problem with the drug earlier this year was never fully explained.

Both of those executions were put on hold temporarily when the compounded lethal injection drug, pentobarbital, turned cloudy and clumps formed in the liquid.

Gissendaner was executed in September and Terrell's was rescheduled for Tuesday after the Department of Corrections determined the problem with the drugs could be blamed on cold storage. But King's lawyer argues that the Georgia Department of Corrections never truly discovered what caused the problem, and continues to insist cold temperatures were to blame even though the agency could not recreate the problem.

King wrote in the appeal that information obtained under the Georgia Open Records Act indicated there were problems with 2 batches of pentobarbital, not just 1, suggesting the cloudiness might not be an isolated incident.

King says there is no way to determine the problem because of the state law that keeps most of that information secret.

"It is only a matter of time before the drugs - compounded by an unknown pharmacy using unknown ingredients in unknown circumstances - become defective again," King wrote.

The sources of Georgia's lethal injection drug and the state secrecy shrouding that information, are issues that have been raised several times in appeals if other condemned killers. Repeatedly the courts have upheld the use of pentobarbital and have ruled that Georgia can keep secret its drug sources to protect pharmacists from public pressure.

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Organizers of an anti-death penalty coalition say they have delivered over 56,000 petition signatures to New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, urging him to sign a bill to repeal the state’s capital punishment law.
Sununu has vowed to veto the bill, saying he stands with crime victims and members of the law enforcement community.
Before presenting the signatures, the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty held a news conference Thursday where family members of murder victims spoke in favor of repealing the death penalty.
The bill was passed by the House and Senate.
It is unclear whether they have a two-thirds majority of votes in both chambers, which is needed to override vetoes. Source: The Associated Press, May 17, 2018

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

The high school junior accused of gunning down 10 students and teachers at a Santa Fe school is facing a capital murder charge - but he’ll never face the death penalty, even in Texas.
Though Dimitrios Pagourtzis was charged as an adult and jailed without bond, even if he’s found guilty he can’t be sentenced to death because of a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. And in the Lone Star State, he can’t be sentenced to life without parole as the result of a 2013 law that banned the practice for minors.
“In Texas, after the Supreme Court’s decision, they passed a law that basically says that it’s a life sentence if you’re under 18 at the time of the crime,” said attorney Amanda Marzullo, executive director of Texas Defender Services. “The Court has said that it is cruel and unusual to execute an individual who is under 18 at the time of the offense.”
The Santa Fe High School student admitted to the mass shooting that killed 10 and wounded 10 others early Friday, according to court documents.…

31 years ago, on May 20, 1987, just before midnight, I was sitting in the witness area of the Mississippi Gas Chamber watching someone die in front of me. His name was Edward Earl Johnson.
I am both sad and glad that Edward’s final two weeks, right up to his agonising death, were recorded in Paul Hamann’s extraordinary BBC documentary Fourteen Days in May. Sad, because from time to time I find myself forced to relive that horror, when I watch the film at some public event; glad, because at least Edward’s senseless death has had positive repercussions – the film inspiring many to take up the battle for people in his precarious predicament.
Yet it irks me beyond measure that people who should know better use their position of power to prognosticate that the justice system never executes the innocent. For example, in a case called Kansas v. March, in 2006, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia loudly proclaimed that there is not “a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a…

How much does the public have a right to know about how the state of Indiana executes people?
It is a question that, effectively, strikes at the heart of capital punishment. And it's the issue in a 4-year-old case in Marion Circuit Court that started with a public records request by Washington attorney A. Katherine Toomey to the Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC).
"If we win ... the Indiana public will know more about one of the most consequential areas of decision making that the state of Indiana engages in," attorney Peter Racher said in an interview.
The state, however, sees it as contrary to a state law limiting what the public can see pertaining to executions. The law was controversial because of how it passed. After midnight on the final day of the 2017 legislative session, it was added to a budget bill, two pages out of 175.
"The budget is now a death penalty bill," Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, said at the time. "There's been no public…

(CNN) - An Australian woman has been sentenced to death by hanging after a Malaysian court overturned an earlier acquittal of drug smuggling charges.
According to CNN affiliate Sky News, a three-judge panel unanimously threw out the previous ruling in 54-year-old Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto's case.
The grandmother and mother of four was arrested in December 2014 while transiting through the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on a flight from Shanghai to Melbourne, according to another CNN affiliate, SBS News.
She was found in possession of 1.1 kilos (2.4 lb) of crystal methamphetamine and faced a mandatory death penalty under Malaysia's draconian drugs laws.
Exposto claimed she had no knowledge of the drugs in her bag and had been scammed by a boyfriend she met online.
According to SBS, Exposto's lawyers said she had gone to Shanghai to file documents in relation to her boyfriend's retirement from service in the US army. When she left China, Exposto claimed she was handed …

The lawyers fighting the death penalty ordered for a former Northmont High School student want the Ohio Supreme Court to reconsider its affirmation of the sentence and scheduling of the execution.
Austin Myers' lawyers said in a motion filed this morning that they want the state's highest court to overturn the conviction and call a new trial "or in the alternative that his sentence be modified to life without parole."
Myers, 23, is still apparently the 2nd youngest on Ohio's death row 3 1/2 years after being sentenced for the murder of childhood friend Justin Back, 18, of Wayne Twp., Warren County.
Last Thursday, the court affirmed the death penalty for Myers, for the stabbing death of Back at his home outside Waynesville in January 2014.
The execution was scheduled for July 20, 2022 in the decision.
Warren County prosecutor David Fornshell was pleased with the 7-0 ruling by the state's highest court.
"The 7-0 decision is always something you like to se…

Defendant claims firefighters didn't try hard enough to extinguish blaze
The nanny responsible for killing 4 members of a family in an arson appeared in court in eastern China on Thursday to appeal her death sentence.
Mo Huanjing, nanny of the family of Lin Shengbin, pleaded guilty to starting the fire. But she said during the appeal at Zhejiang High People's Court that "the penalty in the original ruling was extremely heavy".
"The tragedy wasn't the result I wanted to see," she added. She said the efforts of firefighters were flawed. And she confessed to her offense during the initial interrogation, which could be regarded as a reason to earn a more lenient sentence.
Wu Pengbin, her lawyer, told China Daily that some firefighters and employees of the property management department of Lin's apartment attended the hearing as witnesses at his urging.
"I wanted them to show what they were doing at the time to the court, as I, with my client, thoug…

To cope with his dread, John Kitzhaber opened his leather-bound journal and began to write.
It was a little past 9 on the morning of Nov. 22, 2011. Gary Haugen had dropped his appeals. A Marion County judge had signed the murderer's death warrant, leaving Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, to decide Haugen's fate. The 49-year-old would soon die by lethal injection if the governor didn't intervene.
Kitzhaber was exhausted, having been unable to sleep the night before, but he needed to call the families of Haugen's victims.
"I know my decision will delay the closure they need and deserve," he wrote.
The son of University of Oregon English professors, Kitzhaber began writing each day in his journal in the early 1970s. The practice helped him organize his thoughts and, on that particular morning, gather his courage.
Kitzhaber first dialed the widow of David Polin, an inmate Haugen beat and stabbed to death in 2003 while already serving a life sentence fo…

Concerns about Texas' dwindling lethal injection supplies coupled with questions about the age of the drugs have some advocates wondering whether the state is prepared to humanely carry out its recent uptick in scheduled executions.
Texas currently has 8 death dates and 9 doses of its execution drug - compounded sodium pentobarbital - for use in the Huntsville death chamber. What's more, a string of contradictory records from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice raises questions about whether some of those doses could be 3 years old, far older than previously reported and old enough that experts worry it could increase the chances of a "torturous" execution.
"The older the drug the greater the likelihood of a botched execution. Period," said Maurie Levin, a death penalty lawyer with experience in lethal injection litigation. "It becomes contaminated, corrupted, impotent, and all of those things can lead to a torturous execution."
In response …

Texas executed Juan Castillo, who said he was innocent, for 2003 San Antonio murder
A Texas death row inmate was executed Wednesday — his 4th execution date in a year. Though advocates and his attorneys insisted on Juan Castillo's innocence, he lost all his fights in court and was put to death for a 2003 San Antonio murder.
Juan Castillo was put to death Wednesday evening, ending his death sentence on his 4th execution date within the year.
The 37-year-old was executed for the 2003 robbery and murder of Tommy Garcia Jr. in San Antonio.
The execution had been postponed three times since last May, including a rescheduling because of Hurricane Harvey.
Castillo's advocates and attorneys had insisted on his innocence in Garcia’s murder, pleading unsuccessfully for a last-minute 30-day stay of execution from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott after all of his appeals were rejected in the courts.
The Texas Defender Service, a capital defense group who had recently picked up Castillo’s cas…

DPN opposes the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally, regardless of the method chosen to kill the condemned prisoner. The death penalty is inherently cruel and degrading, an archaic punishment that is incompatible with human dignity. To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values. The death penalty not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly to the public purse as well as in social and psychological terms.The death penalty has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect. It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way on grounds of race and class. It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation. It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim's family and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner. It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it. Death Penalty News is a privately owned, non-profit organization. It is based in Paris, France.Your donations to Death Penalty News DO make a difference.